Weblog: July/August 2002

I read your piece on United Customer Disservice. Isn't it rather amazing that the one airline that is (at least partially) employee-owned would have such stupid rules?

I'm guessing you are a frequent flyer with United. Let me relate an incident that happened to me with Delta, where I'm a frequent flyer. After one of my meetings in DC I was returning home to Florida through Atlanta. I got out of my meeting early and asked to standby for an earlier flight to Atlanta so I could spend some time with Cathy before catching the connecting flight to Florida. Against the rules, I was told.

Now my flight has mechanical problems. The next flight is full. So is the next flight. The attendant in the Crown Room that I was working with:

1. waived the rule so I could fly home to Atlanta that afternoon and continue to Florida the next day (big rule violation), and
2. upgraded me to 1st Class on both flights even though I was flying with a cheap ticket that prohibits upgrades.

Based on her actions, I didn't mind the waiting and changed plans (especially since I got to see my wife for the night). So imagine my surprise when I received a letter of apology from Delta about one week later which included a $150 voucher to use on any future trip.

For an airline, that's Customer Service.

Mark K. Williams, CFPIM
Director - Demand Planning
Numico North American Operations
Boca Raton, FL
mwilliams@rexallsundown.com

:comments?

I had a little run-in with the "customer service" folks at United Airlines last week. I won't bother you with the details, because there was nothing particularly unique about the problem, and if you fly United with any frequency you've probably encountered as bad, or worse. Short version – when you strand me in a city overnight and cost me pretty much an entire workday, I don't consider putting me up in a hotel for the night to be "compensation." You're the only reason I needed the hotel to start with. If I might exaggerate for purposes of illustrating a point, that's kind of like running me over with a car, then telling me that you'll cover the ambulance ride and we'll be even.

Now, my first inclination was to uncork on the shrews working the Customer Disservice counter at Denver International Airport. But I changed my mind, because that would have been shooting ducks in a barrel. Granted, these people were surly even by United's standards, and the supervisor was the single bitchiest airline employee I have ever encountered anywhere, which is saying something.

But ultimately the situation was newsworthy not because they were unhelpful and hateful. You learn in the first five minutes of Journalism 101 that if it happens every day, it ain't news, and in the category of great non-headlines, "United Airlines falls short on customer service" ranks right up there with "Senator influenced by corporate lobbying" and "Red Sox fail to win World Series."

What makes this story worth the time it takes to tell is what these women had to say about their jobs and the company policies governing what they can and cannot do. At a couple junctures in my "negotiations" with the staff, the subject of shoddy customer service came up (this was sometime after the initial assertion that the hotel room the night before was sufficient compensation). What the disservice reps had to say in their defense was illuminating, and goes a long way toward explaining why so many people hate United and why so many stories have been written on the subject.

I will do my best to reproduce the agents' words as accurately as possible, because what they actually said is more revealing than anything I could or would make up. Also, note that this was all said openly in front of several customers standing in line.

First, they all made clear that the company's policy was strictly against providing refunds, credits, bonus miles, etc., and they said they could lose their jobs if they "provide[d] customer service."

Noticed those quote marks, did you? Let me give you the whole line:

Sir, customer service, that's when you want us to give you something when things go wrong. If we provide customer service, they'll fire us.

Say what?

I knew this one girl here, and they fired her. There was this woman in the terminal with two small children, and she had been stranded for two days. Finally, the girl who worked here got her a hotel room and the company fired her for it.

Now things begin to come into focus. It was plainly evident from all my past experiences with United that they didn't exactly blow the whole budget on customer service training, but up until last week I didn't realize how openly hostile management is to the idea of making things right for fliers with legitimate complaints.

Once I heard this, I even began to feel a bit sorry for these people, especially the one woman who finally did the right thing and gave me a $75 credit, a move that will probably get her terminated. [Note: I was flying with a co-worker who was trying her luck three windows down, where the aforementioned supervisor was categorically refusing to acknowledge that she could offer such a credit. Eventually, my co-worker wandered up to the rep I'd initially been dealing with and got the same $75 credit. So at this point you have a system that's both ill-tempered and inconsistent. And for what it's worth, being undercut by the other rep did nothing to improve the supervisor's humor.]

I mean, look at them. Look at the job they have to do. For starters, any customer service job is going to put you at the mercy of the occasional jackass, the blustering boob job who nobody respects because he's a tool, and who takes every opportunity to bully those who, for fear of getting canned, can't give him the swift, steel-toed boot to the balls he so richly deserves.

But unless these women were all lying to us, United is doubling down on their reps, taking away the one salvation of the customer service job: the ability to actually help customers who genuinely need it. You work the counter for a lot of companies (or wait tables or staff a call center) and at the end of the day you can feel good about yourself, because once or twice during your shift you made the day a better place for a genuinely nice, deserving human being. That person left the counter smiling, and they left you smiling.

With United, it's like they have a camera monitoring the Disservice counter, and if they catch anybody smiling, asses will be whipped and names will be taken.

You can see the toll it takes just by standing off and watching a United desk. Many of these poor people hate your fucking guts before you even get to them. There's minimal chance of a happy encounter – with many other companies you at least get to begin your complaint on a pleasant note, even if it eventually turns contentious. But United reps know they're not allowed to help you, and as such all customers (or at least a lot of them) are automatic failures, guaranteed to leave unsatisfied, guaranteed resentments, guaranteed losses. The game is over before it begins. It's a forfeit.

You know what? If you put me in a situation like this, I'd probably be pretty damned surly after a few months, too.

But what are you going to do in a job market like this one? It's not like you can walk away from United and find dozens of even better jobs to choose from. So you buckle down, punch the clock and take your beating, I guess.

I guess. But then there was this, the oddest single exchange in the whole encounter. The supervisor (and if she ever gets into Hell Satan won't last ten minutes), explaining that if she did what I was asking she would probably get fired, snarled:

Sir, I like my job and don't want to lose it.

Damn. You have to wonder what makes somebody like this tick, don't you?

:comments?

This particular debate seems to have attracted quite a lot of interest, for reasons I suppose are obvious enough. The latest guest contribution is from Brian Angliss, a good friend of mine who lives in Northglenn, Colorado.

I have some serious concerns regarding the WTC memorial, and whether or not it is even possible to create a proper memorial to those who died. I don't say this to imply that we shouldn't try, but rather to express that it simply may not be possible to do. How can we create a memorial which honors the past while looking to the future, especially if, as Dr. Smith says, September 11, 2001 will be seen as the transition between the postmodern ideal and some later and as yet undefined grand philosophy? The difficulty is compounded by the fact that I'm not convinced that we can yet determine what the next philosophy will be.

Professor Turner has produced an intriguing proposal, where two towering monuments, joined together by a Gothic arch, are capped with a large garden and which contain the very offices of industry and commerce that New York commercial developers are clamoring for. Such a grand, centralized architectural statement can't help but be monolithic and Modernistic, even if there are nonlinear and organic elements to it. On the other hand, I can't help but sympathize with the desire to replace an iconic construction such as the WTC with a truly iconic memorial. Unfortunately, iconic buildings are, to my understanding at least, definitionally Modernistic.

Could the WTC be constructed along a Postmodernist or distributed ideal instead? Memorials are only effective if they psychologically invoke the events they are memorializing, and I find it difficult to imagine a fragmented, decentralized memorial where the events of 9/11 are so tightly localized to the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Attempting to decentralize a memorial from these three locations would be rightly construed as an attempt to co-opt the memories of the dead and the emotions of the living well beyond those areas most directly affected.

And yet, 9/11 did truly affect the entire country. No localized memorial can properly illustrate how much the entire country was affected, no matter how grand or humble it may ultimately be. Similarly, no distributed memorial, no matter how widely dispersed, can properly demonstrate the trauma felt by those physically or mentally closest to the attacks. Replacing one grand, symbolic Big Target with another cannot address the needs of those around the nation and around the world any more than placing "United We Stand" bumper-stickers on our cars and trucks can address the real needs of the nation for some place, some memorial, to visit and grieve at.

This is not to say we shouldn't try, only to suggest that, whatever the final plans for a memorial are, they will not, even truly can not, represent everyone.

Perhaps the best memorial, maybe even the only true memorial, which can be offered to the dead is a memorial which isn't one. Isn't the best memorial of all a conscious decision to live our lives differently? How many people have flown since 9/11 and not only felt their hearts skip a beat when they saw the lone Indian or Arab walk by their seat, but also silently berated themselves for their newly-discovered prejudice? How many men and women look around airplanes to see who they feel they could count on to retake the plane in the event of a hijacking? How many citizens exercised their rights to free speech and criticized the government while at the same time spent more money than they should have in a conscious effort to do their part to strengthen the US economy?

I claim that these simple actions, taken by tens of millions of people internationally, are the best memorial that the victims of 9/11 could possibly have.

But I don't deny that it's not enough. Nothing ever will be.

:comments?

Let me first say that Professor Turner has thought long and hard on these subjects (see the exchange below) and says more in his brief response than some people I read in my doctoral program said in their entire lives (not that this is necessarily a huge compliment, I realize). When I can find a little time to read – something that's in desperately short supply these days – I plan on having a look at the two books he mentions.

I do have a few specific comments in response.

1: I tend to see Turner's "linear" vs. "tragicomic" models more in terms of the Judeo/Christian ethic, which places humanity outside and above the natural order, depicting nature as a resource to be exploited, vs. a pre/non-Judeo/Christian model which sees humanity as an organic part of nature and which depicts spiritual actualization as attaining harmony within that order. In a sense, the Judeo/Christian dogma, which we see first articulated in Genesis 1: 27-29 (with the repeated assertion of man's dominion over nature), is the primary driver of modernity and our Western ideologies of Progress. (I can go on about this ad nauseum, and actually did just that in my dissertation, which the really bored amongst you can download here.)

At any rate, while we use different languages to describe this opposition, (I would even go so far as to associate his non-linear model with a neo-pagan or Gaian mindset), I believe we are wholly in agreement about its structure and dynamics.

2: The term "natural classicist" seems to inherently conjure a sense of antiquity (as a result of "classicist") when in fact what Turner is describing is the future, not the past. However, I think he's dead-on in envisioning a next phase that's so thoroughly organic (when he talks about it being "bottom-up," and "nonlinear" I can't help thinking about Complexity theory's descriptions of emergent processes, as well as Gaia theory, memetics and my recent discovery of Howard Bloom's Global Brain). I have suggested in the past that once postmodernism has stripped high institutional modernism of its dysfunctional biases, we might do well to begin rebuilding around a more enlightened pursuit of classical values. In the modernist/fundamentalist dialectic I describe in the aforementioned dissertation Turner's natural classicism would be the next iteration of the Romanticist impulse in the cycle.

3: The term "reconstructive postmodernism," though, does no service at all to the argument Turner makes, because its very wording inevitably bogs it down in the postmodern. And what he's talking about is decidedly beyond pomo.

In essence, though, I agree with Professor Turner almost completely in my conception of the social dynamics of the past and coming eras.

4: However, back to my original argument, which was that his WTC memorial design is an artifact of Modernism's grand building impulse, and is more reflective of the Age of the Big Target than it is of one governed by principles of the distributed network.

At the end of the day, the symbolic character of the arch and memorial gardens in his WTC memorial design fails to address what I see as a basic reality: intended symbolism notwithstanding, a massively large duolith that explicitly recalls the WTC is physically very like what it replaced. When I suggest that the structure is symbolically x, I'm not saying that it was conceived with symbolic elements historically associated with x, but rather that it embodies symbolism in ways that transcend the fine touches envisioned by the architect.

Put another way, the WTC was a big target. Professor Turner's proposed memorial would likewise be a big target, regardless of its intended symbolic elements. I hate to get all reductionist when he has done such a beautiful job crafting a thoughtful design, but at some level we have to see it through the eyes of the "sub-theoretical masses" (and the gods have mercy on my simple country populist soul for even uttering those words).

All this being said, I'm impressed enough with the scope of Turner's conceptualization that I'd like to see his idea get a hearing with the folks making the decision on the WTC memorial.

:comments?

Professor Frederick Turner offers a response to my comments on his WTC memorial concept (which you'll find below).

Many thanks for your thoughtful and intelligent response.

I am sympathetic to many of your points, and indeed have criticized both modernism and postmodernism in similar terms. For example, these remarks from a piece I did on environmental restoration:

:a major transition in our basic cultural model of the human relationship with the rest of nature. To try to sum it up in a clumsy sentence, it is a transition from a heroic, linear, industrial, power-based, entropic-thermodynamic, goal-oriented model, to a tragicomic, nonlinear, horticultural, influence-based, synergetic, evolutionary-emergentist, process-oriented model. The heroic model postulates a human struggle with nature culminating in human victory, while the tragicomic model postulates an ongoing engagement within nature, between the relatively swift and self-reflective part of nature that is human, and the rest. The linear model imagines one-way causes and effects; the nonlinear model imagines turbulent interactions in which the initiating event has been lost or is at least irrelevant. The industrial model requires a burning; the horticultural model requires a growing. The power-based model's bottom line is coercion; the influence-based model's is persuasion and mutual interest. The entropic-thermodynamic model involves an inevitable and irretrievable expense of free energy in the universe and an increase of disorder when any work is performed; the synergetic-evolutionary model seeks economies whereby every stakeholder gains and new forms of order can emerge out of far-from-equilibrium regimes. The goal-oriented model imagines a perfect fixed or harmonious state as its end product, and tends paradoxically to like immortal open-ended narratives; the process-oriented model knows that nothing in this universe is ever perfect and immortal, that death comes to everything, that the function of an ending is to open up new possibilities, and it prefers beginning-middle-end narrative structures.:

:Another way of describing the transition is in terms of the crucial distinctions each paradigm tends to make. For the old industrial regime – which includes its dialectical antithesis, puritan environmentalism – the essential distinction was dualistic, between the natural and the human, the genuine and the artificial, the organic and the technological. For the new paradigm, the distinctions are no longer absolute ones of kind, but relative ones of degree, within scales running from linear to nonlinear, power to beauty, simplicity to complexity, statistical to unique, isolation to feedback, nature as thermodynamic decay to nature as evolutionary emergence.:

:The transition itself had three historical phases as regards its attitude toward progress: the modernist, the postmodernist, and what I would call the natural classicist. In the modernist phase, progress was linear advance toward a goal. Politically it tended to be state-driven. In the postmodernist phase, progress was denied or opposed as an evil or an illusion. Politically the state came to be used as a defense against progress, and what drove events were ideological communities united around such things as gender or race. In the natural classicist phase, progress was reconceived and redefined on the model of the market – bottom-up, nonlinear, based on human classical tastes, using a sophisticated tweaking of existing natural processes to achieve its intentions, and submitting itself cheerfully to the consequences as part of the ride.:

Your critique applies well to the old WTC, but ignores the two most important features of the proposed replacement: the arch form, and the memorial garden. Arches have always symbolized interdependence and synergy as opposed to freestanding self-assertion. And the garden is surely the core symbol of the values you rightly praise: the reconstructivist distributed network, etc.

The term "reconstructive postmodernism," by the way, was a coinage by me and David Griffin some years ago. In my books The Culture of Hope and Rebirth of Value I refuted the basic ideas of poststructuralism and deconstructive postmodernism, demonstrating them to be attenuated versions of early modernist ideas. I believe we are in a new era, whose ideas I have called "natural classicism." The memorial design I put forward is in a sense a graphic diagram of how technological modernism (which is going to be providing the infrastructure of our civilization for a long time to come – at least until advanced biotech and nanotech) will evolve and grow and flower into a different world vision. I believe we share that vision.

If you would like to air this reply, you are very welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity for an interesting discussion.

:comments?

(Warning: Reality is never as neat and clean as theory, I'm afraid, but humans are inherently theoretical animals. So bear with me. The following may be a tad obscure in places, but it's going somewhere worthwhile.)

University of Texas-Dallas Professor Frederick Turner has penned an interesting take on the current WTC memorial debate, and makes some very well-considered arguments about how the whole process is off the mark. In short, he believes the current proposals "express, as clearly as if it had been written all over them, that America was defeated by the terrorists," and asserts that we should take this opportunity to erect something "more splendid, more beautiful and more truly symbolic of New York and of America than its predecessor."

To his credit, he offers his own proposal for the memorial, complete with a nice set of sketches illustrating how it would look from various vantage points around the city. I have to say I'm impressed with the power of his vision, especially as it addresses the basic tenets of his larger argument.

However, I also believe his core assumptions reflect a neo-Modernist mindset that exalts the dead past over the living future in potentially self-defeating ways. I'm sympathetic to the motivations driving his proposal, but we need to take this opportunity to face the coming century, not the last one.

Part of what made the WTC such a ripe target was its size. And not just its physical size (although when you're looking for sitting ducks, bigger is clearly better), but its psychic size. The terrorists were dead-on in understanding the symbolic magnitude of the WTC – it stood as a massive monument to capitalism, American style, and as organizing ideological principles go, that’s as big as it gets in contemporary global society.

Postmodern theorist Jean-François Lyotard (and pay attention here, because you don’t catch me quoting French intellectuals very often) talked about the importance of "metanarratives" in shaping cultures, and defined metanarratives as the "big beliefs" that give meaning to our lives (and I’m paraphrasing here, because you don’t want to read all this in his words, I promise you). Things like Christianity, democracy, freedom, capitalism – these are the powerful ideological belief systems that have shaped the course of collective and individual life over the last several decades. And more often than not, metanarratives are closely aligned with large social institutions – Christianity with the Church, democracy with the Government and the Educational System, and so on. When it comes to wreaking both physical and psychological mayhem, then, the World Trade Center was about as undiluted an opportunity as a terrorist could hope for.

The Modern Age – from roughly the end of World War I to the ‘60s, although we could be here all night arguing the point – was all about large institutions, the rise of new empires (superpowers) and the dominance of the conventional principles underpinning these institutions. It was an age of the monolithic.

Postmodernism witnessed the steady erosion of these institutions and their authority to dictate truth and meaning (and all you have to do to understand the basics of this dynamic is to consider what has happened to organized religion in the last 40 years). Of course, Modernism did not go gentle into that good Postmodern night, did it? The "big" impulse is still with us and always will be, and the WTC itself was constructed during the height of the Postmodern. Anyway...

As I sat and watched the horror of 9.11, I realized that Postmodernism had ended. One of the biggest things going, this twin-towered Babel clawing at the belly of Heaven in a spectacular prayer to commerce, had just been ripped from our collective assumption of normalcy. The monoliths are no longer safe – none of them (they hit the freakin' Pentagon, too, and but for a handful of very brave folks on Flight 93 Mr. and Mrs. Dubya would currently be living out of suitcases at the Holiday Inn while their new house was being built). The Age of the Big Target just ceased to make any sense at all.

Enter Professor Turner's proposed memorial, which would be every bit as awesome as the fallen towers it remembers (and would certainly stand as a worthy tribute to the legions of heroes who gave their lives that day). As beautiful and estimable as his monument would be, however, it would also be a reactionary and stubborn restatement of the era of the big institution, an age that we have collectively examined and spent the past several decades slowly dismantling in favor of smaller, more localized assertions of meaning.

The organizing principle of Modernism was the monolith. The response of the Postmodern was deconstruction, an active disorganization of the now-untenable and dysfunctional dogmas that ushered us into global war, then into decades of pig-headed brinksmanship that nearly led, on a couple occasions, into self-annihilation.

I expect the organizing principle of the coming age – the era that began on September 12 (and I'll let you know if I come up with a suitable name for the reconstructivist period we're entering) – will be the distributed network, and we already have some early indications of what this period might look like. The decentralized potency of the Internet is a perfect metaphor in so many ways, and al Qaeda itself provides an apt demonstration of the character and power of the distributed network. First it was able to organize in semi-autonomous cells, where we believe few of the key players (and probably none of the "soldiers") even knew people in other cells (imagine an army where the soldiers don't even recognize each other as soldiers when they're standing in line for a hot dog). Then, the damage done, they retreated into the woodwork, leaving their victims looking desperately for something to attack. As our ill-prepared military has discovered, it's hard to kill something you can't find. Thank goodness for the Taliban, eh?

Stay tuned, because I'll have more on this subject in the coming weeks. For now, though, I'd simply like to suggest to Frederick Turner that we consider framing the WTC memorial in terms of the next world, not the last one. This is an odd thought, since on the face of things we tend to imagine memorials as backward-looking. But in fact, even our tributes to long-dead heroes reflect not the values and motifs of history, but our hopes for the present day and dreams for tomorrow.

Instead of pumping massive resources into a prodigious homage to The Big Target that is itself a big target, why not memorialize the victims of September 11 in terms that demonstrate to those who'd like to destroy us that we get it, that their one free shot not only failed to take us down but it made us smarter, and that we will no longer exalt the very kind of symbolism that made the WTC such an easy target in the first place?

In other words, let's make sure our first major architectural statement of the 21st Century says something about our next victory, not our most recent defeat.

:comments?

In my last missive I asserted that baseball is a lot more than the major league game and that, if they strike, you can boycott MLB without giving up the game itself.

So last night my fiancée and I were over having dinner with her sister, Laura, and Laura’s boyfriend, Rob. Turns out Rob’s nephew TJ was in town visiting from Jersey for a few days. So we got to talking, and it turns out that TJ plays college baseball, and in the summer he plays in an NABA league like I do.

And I realized after a while – we’d been talking for 30 minutes or so and the only mention of MLB had been one little comment about Randy Johnson’s fastball. Three guys who love the game, and with a suicidal strike looming, the subject doesn’t come up at all.

Nothing earth-shaking here, but maybe something for all the zillionaires to think about over the next week or three...

:comments?

It looks more and more like baseball is going on strike. Again. Let me say before I get too far into this that the issues are very real, and that all things considered a disastrous work stoppage leading to dramatic downsizing of the game may be baseball's best hope long-term.

The professional game, that is. I don't think baseball as it is played at the youth and amateur levels across the country will suffer significantly. Baseball no longer occupies a place as the undisputed king of American sports (if football hasn't surpassed baseball entirely, it nonetheless ranks alongside it in the public mind), but it's still widely loved and played by millions of Americans ranging in age from under six to over 70.

At any rate, there are some basic questions I want to address as we approach the second October without a World Series in the last eight years.

Q: If baseball does shut down, whose fault is it?

A: This one is probably on the players, although from a fan's perspective the correct answer is "it doesn't really matter."

I'm not sure I believe Bud Selig when he tells me that a vast majority of Major League teams are losing money. (For that matter, I'm not sure I'd believe him if he told me that the sky is blue.) However, you have only to look at the disparity between big market teams and small market teams to see there's a serious issue that, even if not threatening the financial health of the game to the extent the owners claim, is nonetheless ruining it from a competitive standpoint. (If Bud wants me to buy his "sky is falling" act, he needs to open the damned books.)

And I'm thinking that the big/small dichotomy isn't even right anymore – it's really evolved into a three-headed dynamic: small markets vs. big markets vs. the Yankees, who now have the capacity to grossly outspend the other big market franchises.

All the owners except George Steinbrenner (who I've been telling everybody for years is the devil incarnate) know that the game needs a new financial structure that will ensure a modicum of competitive balance on the field. You can't really have a healthy game when fans of 80% of the teams in the league know that they're mathematically eliminated by Opening Day.

Q: So, what's the answer?

A: Baseball needs something like modified socialism, although the player's union and Satanbrenner are having none of it.

Serious, balls-to-the-wall profit sharing, a hard cap, things like that. A system that insures that all teams in the league have a chance to compete financially. If they lose because they're stupid, well, that's fine. But a system where a smart GM in Kansas City has a legitimate chance to beat a smart GM in New York. A system where the real question at the beginning of the year is a bit more compelling than, "wonder who the Yanks will be playing in the Series this year?"

Q: What should fans do if baseball walks out on us again?

A: Vote with your wallet, for at least two years.

This is pretty harsh advice given the realities I describe above, I know, but players and owners need to be given an unambiguous message that even they can't ignore, ever again. A message whose power won't wane before the next bargaining cycle. A message they'll be talking and writing about 100 years from now.

Attendance is down something like 5000 fans a game since the last strike, but that's not sufficient (obviously – if it were, we wouldn't be hearing a peep about a strike now, would we?)

Here is my personal manifesto, and anybody who knows me even a little bit knows that I'll live by it come hell or high water.

If there is a work stoppage that causes the cancellation of even one game, either this year or next:

• I will not attend a Major League Baseball game, event or function of any sort for at least two years.
• I will not purchase any Major League merchandise or paraphernalia for the same period of time.
• I will not wear or display any Major League merchandise or paraphernalia that I already own during this period, and I may even burn it publically.
• I will not watch Major League Baseball on television for the duration of this boycott, even if my beloved Braves make it to the World Series. (If I'm tempted to cheat on this promise and do find myself watching an occasional game, I will make sure to lie about it to friends, family, co-workers, and if I am so blessed, the Nielsen Corporation.)
• I will make every effort not to acknowledge, even in casual conversation, that Major League Baseball exists.
• To the extent that it's possible, I will not patronize any company that sponsors or supports, in any fashion, Major League Baseball. (This one is tough, and I know it, but I'll make the effort, and I will also take advantage of any opportunity that arise to inform said sponsors that I'm boycotting them, too.)

I'm not asking anybody out there to sign a petition or rally in front of Coors Field or anything, but if enough of us simply make this kind of pledge to ourselves and keep it, when baseball resumes it will do so to drastically smaller crowds, distressingly low TV ratings, and with a little luck, an openly hostile advertising market.

It takes a little willpower, but all things considered what I'm describing is a small sacrifice if it sends a message to the folks responsible for the state we find ourselves in (and by this I mean sending a message to their wallets, which is the only kind of message they understand).

When the next contract expires, it would be nice if people on both sides were to say, "we don't care how much money we're losing as a result of the deal we signed last time, a work stoppage is not an option."

Even better – understand that the players and owners of the NFL, NHL and NBA are watching, too.

Q: Could this actually work?

A: Hell no, it won't work, because fans are sheep.

I hate to say it, but there's about as much risk of baseball fans buckling down and getting it right as there is of Don Fehr and Bud Selig stripping naked, joining arms and singing "Kumbaya" during the 7th inning stretch of Game 7 at this year's Brewers-Devil Rays World Series.

Final question.

Q: But, I love baseball. How can I go without the game for two years?

A: You don't have to.

Go watch college baseball, or the minor leagues. Get invested in your local high school team. Watch the kids play, and reintroduce yourself to the game as it is played by people who do so simply because they love it.

Better yet, play the game. There are adult baseball leagues all over the country, including the National Adult Baseball Association, which operates leagues for players of all skill levels and age groups (even including 50 and over leagues in some places). I've been playing in the NABA for several years now, and if you really love the game I promise you this beats the absolute hell out of flushing your hard-earned money on prima donna millionaire players and billionaire owners who are worse than the players.

Any more questions?

:comments?

The following is a guest contribution from my friend and old roommate, Dr. Greg Stene. Greg loved and played baseball as a kid, but he basically hates baseball now. He admits to not keeping up with the controversies surrounding the game, and says he only gets the issues on a peripheral level. Despite his distance from the situation, though, he nonetheless has some solid and important thoughts on the matter. And they are not pretty.

Sam,

You know I hate baseball. You know I hate everything about it. You know I think it's a stupid game that's become populated by prima donnas who do nothing for the sport (if you can call it one) and do their damnedest to take advantage of the media/money tie-in without even trying to figure how to give something back to the community (maybe you have specifics of how they have done this, but I really don't give a rat's ass).

In essence, the death of Ted Williams has shown the American public (and me, very much) how divorced the sense of what made baseball great once has gone missing from its association with the American people. I loved what baseball was back then. I loved playing and watching it in the sixties. I began to despise it in the seventies.

Forget about all the media deals, and all the competing sports, and all the rest of that crap. That is not the reason baseball has gone straight to hell and not bothered to return.

The players have taken the romance from the game. Sure, the owners try to screw everyone on salaries. And that's not what this note is about. This note is about why maybe two teams can't make salaries, because no one comes to the games, and they can't get great deals on TV rights. The players have taken the romance from the game by their devotion to money. The idea of any one of them getting into a Saturday game in the fall (out of season), just for the hell of it, is impossible to imagine (think of how that would play out in PR for the game, how kids would just freak to discover that these guys had so much passion for The Game, they got together for a "Shadow Series" played out on various public parks at unannounced times during fall ... they just showed up and started playing).

That's just one example of how we can think of how they've taken from the game, and not given anything back to it. That scenario, as doable as it is and as reasonable as it is, and as reflective of how we as kids used to play the game because something unseen drove us to do it, is impossible to imagine with today's crop of players. Today's crop of whiners.

Well, that's all I've got to say. Sorry to bother you.

:comments?